Born in Athens, Ohio, and raised in Kokomo, Indiana, Sally Liu now hails from San Diego, California, where she graduated in 2005 as valedictorian of her class at Rancho Bernardo High School and was a National Merit Scholar and National Advanced Placement Scholar. She is currently an Angier B. Duke Memorial Scholar and Phi Beta Kappa inductee at Duke University, where she will graduate in May 2009 with a degree in Biology, a Minor in Physics, and a Certificate in Genome Sciences and Policy.
Having a keen interest in biomedical research, Sally completed summer research projects on neural stem cell development and gene therapy at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and studied the effects of stress on brain myelination while an Amgen Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. At Duke, she has conducted independent research on the effects of temperature on fruit fly models of autosomal dominant hereditary spastic paraplegia in the laboratory of Dr. Nina Sherwood, which culminated in the completion of her honors thesis in biology last spring. She has presented her research at several national conferences (i.e. the Sigma Xi Student Research Conference and the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting) and received the Outstanding Oral Presentation Award at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students in the Neuroscience Division. Her scientific interests have also led her to become Editor-in-Chief of Vertices, Duke’s journal of science and technology, and the Vice President of the Duke Biology Majors’ Union.
Besides science, Sally is also passionate about service and local community engagement, having served as chair of the Duke Red Cross Minority Health Committee, taught at the Durham Literacy Center as an English language instructor, and volunteered at the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University Medical Center. She has also pursued international experiences by studying civil liability law at the University of Oxford in the UK, serving as an A.B. Duke Research Fellow at the Xi’an Jiaotong University Hospital in China, and interning at the University of California, San Diego Center for Community Ophthalmology, where she worked on community eye health projects at the U.S.-Mexico border region with funding from the DukeEngage program.
Sally was also recruited to Duke as a pole vaulter and is now a team captain for the Duke Women's Varsity Track and Field team. She has competed in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) indoor and outdoor track and field championships, the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) championships, and the National Pole Vault Summit. Other campus activities include serving as a peer academic advisor through Duke Academic Advising's Peer Advising Network, Admissions Ambassador for the Duke Admissions Office, and a member of the Round Table selective living group. Sally was also part of the Arts in Contemporary Society FOCUS program during her freshman year. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, dancing, attending music and arts events, and going to Duke basketball games.
She will defer her admission to medical school to complete degrees in public health and health policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the London School of Economics as a Marshall Scholar. Ultimately, she hopes to pursue a career combining clinical medicine with research and public health.